Information
Overview
welcome back
I
tested this for Kona sometime in 2002,
I believe, and I was well impressed with
this two-map package. I should point out
that all the screenies in this review
were taken in TochrisQuake, using Speedy's
"Elbrus" skybox. This skybox blends delightfully
with the map's colour scheme, but then
I like skyboxes.
Architecture
Brown claw hammer
Think two-tone brown:
particularly, Than's industrial work and
modified Q2 waste. Harsh yellow lamps
and an evil green sky (not shown here)
do most of the illumination of the winding
semi-base, semi-outdoor structures. The
two-tone architecture works extremely
well, giving the maps a very understated,
weighty style.
Both
maps have artful brushwork wrapped around
simple layouts, which when viewed as a
whole resemble a claw hammer.
The
first map is the "handle"; three outdoor
rooms in a line. The course of gameplay
winds in a big lazy S from one side of
gameplay to the other. The structure is,
like much of Kona's work, two-level, with
a small amount of detouring and one secret
that's easily spotted, very nice to have,
but won't guarantee an easy ride. You
can also evade the last battle and run
for the exit, but that can hurt.
The second, the "head"
of the hammer, is a large T-junction:
starting in the middle, you first open
one side, then the other, where a secret
can be reached if you're quick enough.
The final area (the "claw") is basically
a large arena, with a nasty little surprise
right at the end.
QuakeC
Up with the old
If
the modified ambient sounds sound familiar,
that's because Kona's used them before,
and they work exceedingly well, giving
the structures a sense of having something
looming under the surface.
Monsters spawn in with
specialised code, but this sometimes means
that the usual teleport effect doesn't
appear, and there seems to be a delay
between appearing and reacting to you.
This was a hiccup in earlier mods, but
here it could help save your life.
Mainly
because the enemy is mostly modified grunts
and enforcers, toting new weaponry (nailguns,
grenades and rockets, oh my!) and new
skins. Some, again, have appeared in Kona's
earlier works, but they still work quite
well, although clean-cut soldiers alongside
barbarians with red glowing eyes is a
tad odd.
The start map features
destructible walls, if you can work out
where they are, and why. However they
don't seem to appear anywhere else, which
is a shame. They could have been useful.
Armours are also reskinned,
but they still seem to act like normal
armour types.